Mark Megahan
Astronomers may have found their holy grail, an alien exoplanet covered in water. It happens to be around 100 light-years away from Earth but the experts aren’t letting a tiny detail like that detract from their major accomplishment. They found a candidate for a place to move the Human species. Transportation there is the problem of another department.
Water around another planet
Earth can finally say she’s not the only big blue marble out there in space covered with water. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has been searching for a truly Earth-like exoplanet since 2018 and it looks like it hit paydirt. As our equipment gets better, we’re discovering exoplanets right and left.
The ones detected so far range across the gamut of strangeness. One looks like a football, another is covered with oceans but they’re made out of lava. One really weird world “rains glass — sideways.”
On Wednesday, August 24, an international team of scientists broke out the Champaign. One of the targets they had TESS zoom in on “may be covered in a blanket of life’s elixir: water.”
That alone is a major discovery and really promises the possibility of life. The similarity between TOI-1452 b and Earth ends there. First of all, it has two suns. It’s also a lot bigger.
The binary star system is “nestled into the Draco constellation.” The water covered planet is an estimated 70% larger than Earth. Five times the mass means a whole lot more surface gravity but it’s not an easy calculation.
Only a tiny 1% of earth is covered by the wet stuff but on TOI-1452 b it makes up a full 30% of the planet’s mass. things get even more interesting when you start looking at what the clock and calendar would be like there.
An 11 day year
Assuming we invent faster than light travel at some point and humans set their controls for the heart of Draco, The temperature would be about right. We can tell that from the surface of liquid water.
The massive planet rotates on it’s axis slowly, so a day there equals a week on Earth. Meanwhile it flies all the way around its primary star in a mere 11 Earth days. The binary companion star sits about as far away as Pluto is from Earth so the system’s real estate isn’t as crowded as it seems.
The conditions about the water planet which have already been confirmed suggest that it would appear “similar to some places in our own solar system.”
“Enceladus, Saturn’s bright and frigid moon, is thought to host a global subsurface saltwater ocean beneath an icy shield. And Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s glowing companions and the largest moon in our cosmic neighborhood, boasts its own frozen watery expanse.”
Now that the James Webb Space Telescope is online, it has special equipment to study the atmospheric conditions on exoplanets. The solid indications of water on TOI-1452 b suddenly jumped the exoplanet to the top of the task list.
“Our observations with the Webb Telescope will be essential to better understanding TOI-1452 b,” René Doyon, director of the University of Montréal’s iREx and author of the recent study notes. “As soon as we can, we will book time on Webb to observe this strange and wonderful world.“
Just a comment on the Alien Water World story. Water covers 71% of the earths surface, not 1%.